Clean Up Apple Messages to Free Up Space

My family and I love to share pictures and videos in an Apple Messages group text. Since COVID-19 struck, we’ve mostly shared pics and videos of dogs, babies, food, snow, hiking, and the 20-plus bananas I accidentally bought in an online grocery order.

- JILL DUFFY

Most of them aren’t photos and videos that I want to keep forever. And even if I save my own copies, I don’t necessarily want them buried in a text thread.

In addition to backing up and organizing photos from your iPhone or iPad, which you should do first, you might also want to delete them from your Apple Messages app. Doing so will help you free up space on not only your mobile devices but also on any computers where you use Messages. Below are instructions for how to do it—but first, you need to know about three strange things you might encounter while removing images and videos from your Apple devices.

WATCH OUT FOR THESE 3 QUIRKS

When I’ve deleted videos and images from Messages, I’ve noticed three quirks. First, even though I sync Messages between macOS and mobile devices, deleting the images and videos from one location doesn’t delete them from the other. In other words, I can delete videos sent over text from my phone, but they still appear when I open Messages on my computer. If you’re tidying up, be sure to do it in all the places where you use Messages.

The second quirk happens on iPhone specifically. When I select multiple videos or images to delete from the Messages app, a button appears confirming that I want to Delete X Messages, and the X number is often wrong. For example, I deleted one video (and it didn’t have any reactions on it, such as a heart or thumbs up) and the confirmation message said Delete 3 Messages. I don’t know why this occurs, but it’s never caused an unwanted deletion.